When it comes to approving housing permits for developers, Chatham-Kent is one of the fastest municipalities in the province.
Chief Administrative Officer Don Shropshire said the municipality takes 20 days or less to get a building permit out the door for a house and added there are very few places in the province that get permits approved any faster.
Mayor Darrin Canniff said eliminating red tape is the key to expediting housing permits.
"We spent a lot of time a few years back going through and eliminating as much red tape as we possibly could, knowing that the province provides a lot of red tape in all this as well," said Mayor Canniff.
Rob Piroli, President of Piroli Construction, said in his experience, Chatham-Kent is the best municipality to get approvals in southwestern Ontario. Canniff said a large apartment complex on Park Avenue West only took six months for Piroli Construction to have a shovel in the ground.
Canniff said sometimes applications take a little longer because the builder doesn't agree with something or has an incomplete application but for the most part, things go very smoothly.
"We've been working very hard to ensure we're not the bottleneck. I want people coming to our community that are developers and say I want to come here because it's easy to do business here," the mayor said.
Ontario has a housing shortage and some developers are complaining that municipalities are too slow processing permits.
Canniff, who is fresh off a provincial housing summit this week, said the province needs to build another million housing units to meet demand. He said Canada ranks much lower than the rest of the G7 countries when it comes to housing.
The municipality had a record 390 new building permits in 2021, which accounts for just under 800 new housing units across the community.
Council is also planning to hire new building inspectors to help with the local housing boom.
